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Solvency – SETI Affirmative
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Solvency – SETI Affirmative[____] [____] SETI functions better when it is not involved with the federal government. Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at Cato Institute, senior economist on congressional Joint Economic Committee, 2005, “Downsizing The Federal Government”, http://www.cato.org/downsizing-government/Downsizing-the-Federal-Government.pdf In recent decades, private businesses, such as communications satellite firms, have gained a foothold in space. In 2004 Burt Rutan put the world’s first privately financed astronaut into space with an innovative spaceship design and a small $20 million budget. Entrepreneurs such as Virgin Group founder Richard Branson are planning for space tourism flights to begin later in the decade. In the 1990s the government cut off funding for NASA’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project, which uses radio telescopes to search for life on other planets. Private funders have stepped in to create a SETI Institute, and the project is now thriving. The Washington Post recently observed that Silicon Valley techies have infused the project with money and unconventional technical ideas, bringing a new respect and energy to the organization. Some argue that being cast away by the federal government was the best thing that could have happened to SETI, that it has become stronger and more innovative in the private sector than it ever could have as part of a public bureaucracy. The rest of NASA ought to be terminated or privatized as well. Unfortunately, NASA funding is sustained by politics. As President Bush was beginning his reelection effort in 2004, the White House cast about for an uplifting initiative. They came up with a nutty scheme to send a manned space mission to Mars called ‘‘Vision for Space Exploration.’’ The public has not asked for a Mars mission, NASA would probably bungle it, and the costs of such a mission would be astronomical over the next couple of decades—just as the costs of programs for the elderly are exploding. Unfortunately, politics won the day because House Majority Leader Tom Delay (RTX) pushed the funding through Congress because his district—home of the Johnson Space Center—would be a big winner. [____] SETI is an easy target for budget cuts and its best hope is in the private sector. Private donors funded previous attempts at SETI. Christopher Cokinos, professor of English at the University of Arizona researching SETI, 6/20/2011, “Funding cut to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the death of curiosity,” The Republic, For now, the phone is off the hook — as it was in 1994 when Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., derided NASA's "Martian chase" and successfully shut down its SETI — "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence" — program. It would cost each U.S. taxpayer just 3 cents a year to fund the Allen array, according to SETI Institute Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak. But in this political environment, direct taxpayer support is unlikely, so the SETI Institute is trying to raise $5 million to reboot the array. Donors such as Microsoft's Paul Allen stepped up after NASA's project died; it's for him that the array is named. In fact, SETI's best hope may be the private sector. Privately financed astronomy is nothing new. In the 18th and 19th centuries — the heyday of private observatory building — such work was in part spurred by interest in alien life. Solvency – SETI Affirmative[____] [____] SETI has been funded by private sources before and has been empirically successful. Brian Berger, Staff Writer for Space.com, 10/23/2006, “With NASA Budget Cuts Looming: SETI Eyes Private Funding” http://www.space.com/3031-nasa-budget-cuts-looming-seti-eyes-private-funding.html Hubbard said in an interview that if NASA goes through with the proposed cut, SETI would expect to see its NASA grant funding reduced by about 20 percent--making it impossible to sustain without outside help from the nearly 50 astrobiology researchers it has on staff. Astrobiology, a discipline NASA has been funding for about 10 years, is the hardest hit in NASA's proposal to reduce its overall scientific research and analysis spending by about 15 percent in the year ahead. NASA is under pressure from the hundreds of research scientists it funds and their allies in Congress to reverse course on the proposed reductions, and the SETI Institute is part of that fight. But Hubbard said SETI's intent in establishing the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe is to introduce a measure of long-term stability to the astrobiology community, not protest the current proposed cuts. "Cleary [SETI Chief Executive Officer] Tom Pierson and [SETI trustee] Barry Blumberg and the entire science community are working the political process to try to get the funds restored," Hubbard said. "But federal funding for anything can go up and down, so let's try to broaden our portfolio and be here for the long haul and not just wring our hands about it." SETI is no stranger to seeking private funding to sustain its activities. The institute's well-known radio searches for signals from other intelligent life in the universe has been entirely funded by about $6 million a year in private donations since Congress cut off federal funding for the efforts in 1993. AT: Counterplan Links to Spending[____] [____] The counterplan avoids the spending disadvantage. Tax incentives do not require the government to spend money. Edward Aldridge Jr. et al, Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, at the Department of Defense, June 2004, “A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover,” Report of the President’s Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy, http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/60736main_M2M_report_small.pdf Tax Incentives. A time-honored way for government to encourage desired behavior is through the creation of incentives in the tax laws. In this case, an increase in private sector involvement in space can be stimulated through the provision of tax incentives to companies that desire to invest in space or space technology. As an example, the tax law could be changed to make profits from space investment tax free until they reach some pre-determined multiple (e.g., five times) of the original amount of the investment. A historical precedent to such an effort was the use of federal airmail subsidies to help create a private airline industry before World War II. In a like manner, corporate taxes could be credited or expenses deducted for the creation of a private space transportation system, each tax incentive keyed to a specific technical milestone. Creation of tax incentives can potentially create large amounts of investment and hence, technical progress, all at very little expense or risk to the government. 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